Thingol

Thingol belonged to the first generation of the Quendi, the Elves who awoke beside the waters of Cuiviénen in the far east of Middle-earth under a starlit sky, before Sun or Moon. When Oromë came upon that people and the Valar summoned them westward, the Quendi who answered were called Eldar, the people of the stars, and they set out in three hosts. Thingol, then known by the Quenya form Elwë, was lord of the third and most numerous of these kindreds, the Teleri, a people slower to march than the others and much given to song and to the love of water. His brother Olwë shared that lordship with him, and the two are consistently named together in the accounts of the march.

His full Quenya name was Elwë Singollo, of which the second element is a descriptive epithet rather than a patronymic: it renders as Greymantle or Grey-cloak. The Sindarin equivalent, Elu Thingol, is the form by which he was known in Beleriand and by which the later chronicles most often call him, and the glossary of name-elements appended to the published Silmarillion accounts for it through the words for grey and for cloak. The epithet was understood to answer to his appearance, for his hair is described as silver-grey, unlike that of most of his kindred, and he was reckoned the tallest among the Children of Ilúvatar. Where the two forms of the name are set side by side in the texts, the Sindarin form generally marks the point at which his story ceases to be that of a Telerin lord and becomes that of a king in Middle-earth.

The Elves who remained in Beleriand and took him for their king were afterwards called the Sindar, the Grey-elves, and their tongue Sindarin; The Lord of the Rings preserves both terms and treats Sindarin as the everyday Elvish speech of the Third Age. In the Appendices Thingol himself appears chiefly as a name in genealogy, standing at the head of the line that runs through Lúthien to Elrond and so to the kings of Númenor and of Gondor. The pronunciation follows the rule set out there for Elvish names: the initial letters represent the voiceless th of English thin, not a plain t.

Before the westward journey began, three of the Quendi were carried to Valinor so that they might see the Valar and report what they had seen, and Elwë went as the envoy of the Teleri together with Ingwë of the Vanyar and Finwë of the Noldor. It was their persuasion, more than the summons itself, that moved the greater part of the Elves to take the road. On the march Elwë led his own people, who came last of the three hosts and were often slow to follow, and when the Teleri had passed the mountains and lay in the eastern lands of Beleriand he went alone into the wood of Nan Elmoth, seeking Finwë, whose friendship he had kept since the embassy. There he heard the birds singing about Melian and came to her, and he took her hand; and while they stood together, silent under the trees, long years went by, and his people searched the woods for their lord and did not find him.

In the meantime Ulmo returned to bear the last of the Eldar over the sea. Olwë took up the lordship of those who would go and led them aboard the island, but a great number refused to sail while their king was lost, and these named themselves the Eglath, the Forsaken People, and remained behind. When at last Elwë came out of the wood he was king over them, and with Melian beside him he gathered a realm in the forests between the rivers. For his seat the Dwarves of Belegost were engaged to delve the halls of Menegroth under the hill by the Esgalduin, and Melian guided their work; the price was paid in pearls out of the sea, which Círdan gave in great store, and to the master of Belegost was given the greatest of them, Nimphelos. From the smiths of Nogrod the Sindar, who had gone unarmed, received the first mail and weapons of their own making, and Círdan and the folk of the Falas acknowledged Elwë as their king.

That growth belonged to the long quiet while Melkor was held captive in Valinor. With his return and the ruin of the Two Trees, an army of Orcs came south into Beleriand in two hosts, and in the battle that followed, the first of the wars of the country, Thingol fought east of Sirion with Denethor, lord of the Green-elves, who had crossed the mountains to his aid. Denethor was cut off upon the hill of Amon Ereb and slain there, and though Thingol broke the eastern host, the western one drove Círdan back to the shore. Afterwards Thingol drew his people into the forests about Menegroth, and Melian set about the land a fence of enchantment that no one could pass against her will; the enclosed country was thereafter called Doriath. The published narrative sets all of this in order relative to itself rather than by reckoned years, and gives no date for these events.

The coming of the Noldor into Beleriand altered his position rather than his policy. He received the sons of Finarfin with favour, since through their mother Eärwen they were descended from Olwë and so of his own kin, and by Angrod he sent word to the newcomers that they might settle in the northern lands and the highlands, while he claimed lordship over Beleriand as a whole. The peace between them broke when Angrod, goaded into speech at last, told him of the slaying of Olwë's mariners at Alqualondë and of the ships taken there. Thingol did not make war upon the Noldor, but he forbade their tongue to be spoken in his realm, and the ban spread so far that the exiles themselves came to use the speech of Beleriand in daily life. Through the long siege of Angband and its breaking in the sudden flame, Doriath stood apart from the northern battles, guarded by the Girdle.

The most consequential of his decisions was made when Beren son of Barahir passed the fence unhindered and was brought before him, and Lúthien confessed her love. Thingol, unwilling to kill a man his daughter had claimed and unwilling to consent, named as bride-price a Silmaril out of Morgoth's iron crown, believing that he had sent the man to certain death without shedding blood himself. Melian warned him that he had bound his own fate to the jewels by that word. Beren returned alive but maimed, his hand and the Silmaril taken by the wolf Carcharoth at the gate of Angband, and Thingol, moved at last, granted what he had refused. In the hunting of that wolf through Doriath he rode out with Beleg and Mablung and the hound Huan; Huan and Carcharoth destroyed one another, Beren was carried dying to Menegroth, and Mablung cut the jewel from the wolf and laid it in the king's hand.

Within the legendarium Thingol occupies a position that no other Elf of Middle-earth holds: he is a king of the Eldar who never dwelt in Aman, yet who had walked there. Of all the Elves who remained east of the Sea he alone had looked upon the Two Trees while they flowered, and the chronicles therefore reckon him among the Calaquendi, the Elves of the Light, although the people he ruled were not. This gave him a standing that the Noldor could not easily dispute when they returned as exiles, and it underlies his claim, made through Angrod, to be overlord of Beleriand and its shores. The mariners of the Falas took him for king, and after the death of Denethor the Green-elves of Ossiriand chose no lord again but looked to Doriath for protection, so that his authority reached, at least in name, well beyond the woods he actually governed.

Of all the bonds recorded of Thingol, the chronicles treat one as without parallel: a marriage between one of the Ainur and one of the Children of Ilúvatar, of which no second instance is named in the Elder Days. Lúthien was the only child of that union, and no other offspring of his is recorded, so that the household at the centre of a great realm was very small. Its other notable member was Daeron, minstrel and loremaster of the king, who made his songs for Lúthien and loved her without return; twice he carried to Thingol what he had learned of her dealings with the mortal man, and the second telling served only to have her confined. The irony of the family line is not concealed by the texts: the heir who came at last to rule in Menegroth was Dior, born of the match Thingol had set out to make impossible.

His alliances tended to be with those who were not his kin and owed him little. Círdan of the Falas and the Green-elves under Denethor accepted his overlordship by choice rather than descent, and the two servants who appear most often at his side, Beleg and Mablung, were captains of his march rather than princes of his house; both spent themselves on errands beyond the Girdle in matters that touched Doriath only at a distance. With the Dwarves of Ered Lindon his people maintained a longer traffic than any other Elves of Beleriand, but the accounts describe an exchange of goods and skills rather than affection, and note that neither kindred greatly loved the other. From his brother he was sundered by the sea and they did not meet again.

In the earliest layer of the mythology the figure who became Thingol is Tinwë Linto, one of the three ambassadors taken to see the Valar and lord of the third kindred, who was lost from the march and stayed in the woods with the fay Wendelin, elsewhere written Gwendeling. Under the Gnomish form of his name, Tinwelint, he rules a forest kingdom called Artanor, and his daughter is Tinúviel; the suitor whose petition he answers with a demand for a Silmaril is there not a mortal Man but a Gnome, so that his refusal turns upon rank rather than upon kind. The name Elwë belonged for many years to someone else entirely. In the Quenta Silmarillion written in the 1930s it is borne by the lord of the Teleri who completed the journey and dwelt in Aman, and Thingol is called his brother; only afterwards did Tolkien transfer that name to Thingol himself and give the brother who sailed the name Olwë, which is the arrangement the published text preserves.